A-1 Pictures President Explains How the Studio Picks Its Projects

A-1 Pictures' President breaks down how it chooses which anime to tackle.

By Evan Valentine

A-1 Pictures has played a major hand in the anime industry for decades. Most recently, the production house has weaved stories including Solo Leveling, Too Many Losing Heroines, Nier: Automata Ver 1.1a, and Mashle: Magic And Muscles. Later this year, the anime studio will return to the world of Sword Art Online in the second season of Gun Gale Online, the side story that shifts from focusing on Kirito the Black Swordsman to Karen Kohiruimaki. With so many projects on their plate, A-1's president recently spoke at this year's Anime Expo regarding how the studio chooses which anime series to tackle.

At this year's Anime Expo, A-1 Pictures' Shinichiro Kashiwada, the studio's president, used Mashle: Magic & Muscles as an example of how the production house chooses its anime projects, "For instance, Mashle as a manga itself, it's extremely popular. We're very thankful that we've chosen to produce its anime. With anime, there are many cases where we want to make something our studio puts content out there. Usually, for adaptations, the biggest factor for picking a series is a story that becomes popular and then an offer comes to us. Of course, there are also original productions, so there are things that we produce ourselves."

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(Photo: A-1 Pictures)

A-1 Pictures' Future

On top of Gun Gale Online's second season arriving later this year, A-1 Pictures is also working on the second season of Solo Leveling and new Lycoris Recoil web shorts. First opening its doors in 2005, it doesn't appear as though A-1 Picture is slowing down in the anime industry any time soon. 

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If you haven't caught up on A-1 Pictures' Sword Art Online: Gun Gale Online, the first season is available to stream on Crunchyroll. Here's how the streaming service describes the side story, "In the world of guns and steel that is Gun Gale Online, LLENN has been a devoted, female solo player. She is obsessed with two things: donning herself entirely in pink and honing her skills with consistent game play. She soon discovers her love for hunting other players (a.k.a. PK), soon to be known as the 'Pink Devil.' Meanwhile, LLENN meets a beautiful yet mysterious player, Pitohui, and the two click right away. Doing as she is told by Pitohui, she enters the Squad Jam group battle."  

Want to see what A-1 Pictures has in store in the future? Follow along with Team Anime on ComicBook for all the latest updates on the anime studio. 

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